Please pull over a chair and have a seat; there’s something I’d like to share with you. It’s about that election coming up on Tuesday November 6. (And for all you progressives don’t forget that if you’re too busy to vote that Tuesday there’s an alternate voting date of Wednesday.) So the thing is I won’t be voting for Mr. Obama.

Now I have two remaining opportunities to write about this election before it happens. By the third week I’ll already be writing in retrospect possibly to share what if anything is different about sending in my column from Melbourne (the Australian city not the Queens street). Or possibly to observe that having a President Romney in office doesn’t create any euphoria just the kind of relief felt after the locomotive barreling down the tracks misses your stalled car by “that much.” We’ll have to wait and see.

This is definitely one of those times when I just can’t be thankful enough to be a frum Jew with a modicum of faith and belief that Palgei mayim lev melech b’yad Hashem (Mishlei 21:1) to keep me on an even keel even as the rest of the world — right and left alike — goes bonkers from fear of what may happen to their candidate and country on the 6th. That doesn’t include of course all those “undecided voters ” who like me are sleeping just fine these nights. Unless as I suspect that entire category is a media fiction and is actually comprised only of severely neglected people desperate for a once-in-four-years chance to get the attention they crave.

So how to use my bit of space here in the run-up to the election? I suppose I could offer reasons to vote as I think one should but I won’t. There certainly are enough folks out there on both sides offering reasons to vote for their guy. National Review is selling a poster featuring — count ‘em — 689 reasons to boot Barack Obama out of office. That figure however includes several dozen repetitions of “Joe Biden” sprinkled throughout the list of reasons.

On the other hand there’s a website that since early August has been featuring one short essay daily explaining why the writer will be voting for Obama one reason for each of the final 90 days before the election. The writer who created it wanted to counter the “stunning lack of energy displayed by likely Obama voters.”

It is a precious and fascinating resource for the study of the liberal mind. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Unfortunately I discovered it too late to explore it more fully here but I’ll share just a couple morsels. One contributor is a musician who performed at the White House and describes meeting the president and first lady afterwards on the red welcoming carpet:

[W]hen I reached the end the pomp and circumstance seemed to fall away and there were two real people there … who reached out gave me a big hug and said thanks for coming ... and just like most everything that comes out of their mouths you could tell they really meant it.

Gosh. As I was saying if it weren’t for bitachon I’d believe the future of the Republic was in the hands of this fellow and millions like him. There’s more where that came from: “Somehow in those three minutes they made me feel at ease and conveyed the truth of the human experience: that no one is any better or worse than anyone else.” But as the Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson observes the “truth of the human experience turns out not to include Republicans however for in the next paragraph [he] notes that George W. Bush is an ‘evil robot.’$$$SEPARATE QUOTES$$$”

For his sake I hope this fellow doesn’t find out what Neera Tanden a former Obama aide and now president of the arch-liberal Center for American Progress had to say the other day about her former boss: “It’s stunning that he’s in politics because he really doesn’t like people. My analogy is that it’s like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers.”

Then again she swiftly recanted with “I was trying to say how President Obama who I admire greatly is a private person but I deeply regret how I said it ” and this musician chap will no doubt believe her.

Another day a young Jewish kid submitted a paragraph that reads in part:

I’m traveling throughMongoliaand currently staying in a yurt. This was not by choice; I’m with persuasive friends.… I think traveling and seeing how other people live even if I’m not totally immersing myself assuages some of my unease because it re-sensitizes me to the difficulties and existential inconveniences that most other people face.… I think Barack Obama is a good leader for our diverse country because he’s seen how the world lives.

And as I read two thoughts go through my mind: One his earnestness and psychological transparency is almost physically painful. Two Obama must not have been available for comment.

I JUST SAID THAT I came across a 2006 article by the essayist Joseph Epstein in which he lavishes praise on an online monthly journal called the Vocabula Review. It’s edited by one Robert Hartwell Fiske who “battles nonstandard careless English and embraces clear expressive English” — clearly not the sort of guy you want to invite to your next party. But I like language and I happen to agree with Epstein’s sentiment that “without careful language there can be no clear thought. Politicians advertising copywriters swindlers … know this well and put it to their own devious uses. The rest of us tend to easily forget this central truth.”

So I dropped in on Fiske’s journal and found an offering by Richard Lederer entitled “The Department of Redundancy Department”:

On the grounds ofSt. Paul’s School … stood two signs that announced “Private Property: No Trespassing Without Permission.” Early in my career at the school I explained to the administration that the warning was redundant that by definition the act of trespassing is committed without permission … but tradition endures and prevails inNew Englandboarding schools. Now more than forty-five years later the signs still stand…. Unauthorized visitors are still required to obtain permission before they trespass on our grounds.

I am surrounded by an army of recurrently repetitive redundancies. In fact I am completely surrounded. Even more than that I am completely surrounded on all sides. These repeated redundancies are in close proximity to my immediate vicinity which is a lot worse than their being in distant proximity in a vicinity far away.

I turn on the radio … and learn that “at 10 a.m. in the morning” a man has been found “fatally slain” “leaving no living survivors” that three convicts “have successfully escaped” (how else does one do it?) … etc. etc.”

There’s more to this essay but I don’t know what it is. When I clicked on the “More” button to bring up the rest of it a page popped up inviting me to read on after taking a paid subscription to the journal. As I said I like language but not that much.

Recently I edited a submission to Mishpacha by a respected communal figure after which he thanked me for helping him to clarify his thinking and distill it into a succinct essay with simple elegance. It conveyed his important message entirely within the confines of a tight word count. I responded by sharing my belief that the single most important course in a mesivta English department curriculum is one that teaches bochurim how to write clearly and effectively.

Even those boys who in late afternoons are seized by a sudden inexplicable cheshkas haTorah that weakens their interest in attending secular studies ought to realize that the class on writing will discernibly benefit their Torah learning. It will inculcate the invaluable skill of taking care and being deliberate; it will accustom them to clarifying their thoughts before verbalizing or writing them; and it will make them attentive to the subtle nuances of words and phrases which is indispensable to the work of making diyukim (inferences) in Gemara and Rishonim.

And perhaps the yeshivah can purchase a subscription to Mr. Fiske’s journal for the English teacher.…